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Too many.
But I’d make them rue the day anyway.
I drew a gun and tried to remember how my feet worked, getting ready for the moment when my shield failed. I vaguely wondered why I hadn’t been attacked already, while I was off-balance and vulnerable. But I hadn’t, probably because they didn’t view me as much of a threat.
Yeah, we’d see how much threat I was, I thought, surging to my feet.
And then abruptly plopping back down on my butt, when I almost blacked out.
I snarled at them like a wounded animal. Nobody snarled back. And they seemed to be taking an awfully long time to get to me, or was my brain playing tricks?
I blinked at them, trying to bring my fuzzy vision into better focus. And belatedly noticed something I’d missed. Because these . . . were not normal looking fey.
They kind of looked like they’d been hanging out in the dead zones a little too long. The bodies were mostly all right, except for one with a huge hunchback and what looked like some spines growing out of it. But everything else . . .
I scuttled out of the way of one with long, greasy white locks that weren’t the usual silver bright color I was used to, like moonlight distilled. Instead, these were flat and dead, like his face, which appeared to be sliding off the bones, with huge, red, gaping holes under the eyes. They weren’t wounds, but rather the sockets, which had sagged an inch or more into his cheeks, leaving bloody half-moons under yellowed, bloodshot eyes. The irises were milky as if in death, but apparently still able to see. Because he followed me as I crab walked backwards, so freaked out that I couldn’t get back to my feet.
He bent down, that horrible, dead face in mine. And, of course, just about that time, my shield gave out. I felt like screaming, but I didn’t have the breath. And before I could get it, he spoke, in a horrible, dry rattle, completely unlike any voice I’d ever heard, human or fey.
Although it didn’t matter, as I couldn’t focus on the words anyway, since the stench of his breath almost had me passing out again.
It smelled like death. It smelled like old death, weeks past its prime, full of rot and decay. It smelled—
I couldn’t describe how it smelled.
I rolled away, desperate to get out of range of that stench, but now they were all coming at me. Not quickly, not with weapons, and not in any other way threatening. Just coming.
And it was worse than any attack I’d ever suffered.
“What the fuck?” That was Tomas’s voice, and then Louis-Cesare’s arms were around me, pulling me up.
I knew him instinctively, and assumed that the rest of the team was here, too, but I didn’t turn to see. I couldn’t seem to move. Because the fey were still coming, only not with the springy grace they usually had, but with a shuffling, halting sort of walk. Even worse, they were speaking.
I didn’t know the language; didn’t know what they said.
But Tomas seemed to.
“What do they want?” Louis-Cesare rasped. And, for once, the two weren’t arguing. Petty, or even not so petty, emotions just didn’t hold up in here.
“They want us to kill them,” Tomas said blankly, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, either.
“Not a problem,” Jason said harshly, and raised his gun.
Tomas shoved it down. “They want to die in Faerie! That’s the only way their souls can be reborn. It’s their religion.”
“Fuck their religion.”
But Sarah was a little more generous of heart. She didn’t say anything, but she came forward and put a hand on her brother’s shoulder. And, without a word being spoken, Jason holstered the gun.
“You’re the expert,” he said to Tomas. But he was still fingering his weapon, as if he’d enjoy granting their request.
Only, it looked to me like somebody already had.
“Jonathan,” Louis-Cesare said.
And, yeah, obviously.
But Tomas didn’t seem to agree. “No,” he said, because of course, he’d know the story. They had been master and servant for something like a century, whether Tomas had liked it or not. And he seemed generous enough not to make fun of that, at least. “But he isn’t behind this.”
